Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sockpuppet_12 1598 days ago
Is the life of one innocent person an acceptable price for success?
2 comments

What do you mean by success here? Depending on your definition, I think there are times where the answer is yes. There are clear analogs to the trolley problem in public policy every day.
Is the life of one innocent person an acceptable price for the lives of several innocent people?

Note well: I'm not actually a consequentialist. I'm just pointing out what "for success" actually means, at least some of the time.

The answer we have generally come to is based on a psudo kantian interpretation of causality. One innocent can die due to inaction, but you can't actively kill one to save many.

We don't allow nonconsentual body snachers to harvest one person to save many. Alternatively we may allocate finite funds to save several lives instead of a single life. We may also choose not to spend the money to save a life